Steve Dowden chairs the Department of German, Russian and Asian Languages and Literatures at Brandeis University. He studied in Tübingen and at the University of California in Berkeley where he earned a Ph.D. in German. Before joining the faculty at Brandeis, Steve was a member of the German Department at Yale University. He has received several awards, including a Humboldt Fellowship, a Morse Fellowship and a Fulbright Fellowship. As a teacher and scholar his main focus has been Modern German literature and culture; European modernism; comparative literature (esp. comparing literature with other art forms); the novel as form; literature and philosophy. Dowden’s scholarly articles cover a wide range of topics, with a special emphasis of modern and contemporary Austrian literature and culture. His books include Sympathy for the Abyss: A Study in the Novel of German Modernism (1986), Hermann Broch: Literature, Philosophy, Politics (ed. 1988), Understanding Thomas Bernhard (1991), Kafka's Castle and the Critical Imagination (1995), Companion to Thomas Mann's Magic Mountain (1999) and German Literature, Jewish Critics: The Brandeis Symposium (with Meike Werner, 2002).